BASILICS. – A great Byzantine juridical compilation, promulgated in Greek under Emperor Leo VI the Wise (886–911), under the title Collection of the Entire Legislation in 60 Books (Παρὰλληλος συναγωγή καὶ σύνταξις ἐν Ἰούς βιβλίοις ἑξήκοντα πάσης νομοθεσίας).
This work was conceived and completed as a *repurgatio*, that is, a correction, updating, and reworking of the entire legislative output of Justinian (v.) and of the subsequent legislation up to Emperor Leo VI (in particular, account was taken also of the *Ecloga* of Leo the Isaurian and Constantine Copronymus, though not explicitly). This *repurgatio* of the ancient sources was already planned and partly carried out in the time of Basil I (867–86), as can be seen from references in two passages, one in the preface of the *Prochiron* and the other in the prologue of the *Epanagoga*. As we can ascertain from the text of the Basilics that has come down to us, the material drawn from earlier legislation, after removing everything that was either unsuitable or seemed so for the times and needs of the age of Basil I and Leo VI, was reworked and arranged into 60 books, which in turn were divided into titles (within the same title are gathered matters concerning a single juridical institution: *de nuptiis*, *de legatis*, *de tutoribus*, etc.), provided with rubrics and subdivided into chapters (*capitula*) and sections (*themata*). In the *capitula*, the passages taken from the sources follow one another in the order they had in them. As for the compilation of the Greek text of the Basilics, the compilers made use of translations, paraphrases, elaborations, and scholarly works produced by the jurists of the 6th–7th centuries; this was done for the Justinianic Latin sources; whereas for the Novels and later legislation, the original Greek text was mostly used, or it was slightly reworked in some cases.
The text of the Basilics in several manuscripts is accompanied by a body of scholia, most of which are fragments of commentaries and paraphrases on the text of the *Corpus Iuris* dating from the 6th to the early 7th century; to these were sometimes added passages drawn from works by jurists of the 12th century. In character and arrangement, this system of scholia finds complete analogy in the so-called *Catenae* of Byzantine theological literature. As for the replacement of such *Catenae* by the Basilics, it is now accepted opinion that this apparatus was added to the text later, most probably in the 10th century, and subsequently, in the 12th–13th centuries, extracts from commentaries by 12th-century jurists were added. Ecclesiastical matters are treated mainly in Book I, Title II (on the Trinity and Catholic faith), in Book I, Title III, §§ 1–4; Book I, Title IV; Book I, Title V, §§ 1–3 (matters of organization and administration of the Church and ecclesiastical private law); Book I, Title LX, §§ 54, 20 ff. (penalties for violations of Church laws and against heretics). All these norms are inspired by criteria of strict defense of dogma and Church discipline.
The Basilics as we have them today, due to extensive lacunae in the current manuscript tradition, are incomplete, even in the most recent edition by G. E. Heimbach (6 vols., Leipzig 1833–70) with the supplements by Zachariae von Lingenthal (ibid. 1846) and by C. Ferrini and G. Mercati (ibid. 1897).
For this reason, two summaries of the entire work are noteworthy for gaining an idea of the parts of the Basilics that are lost or still hidden in manuscripts: the *Synopsis Basilicorum maior* of the 10th century (ed. Zachariae von Lingenthal, *Ius Graeco-Romanum*, vol. VI) and, even more so, the *Tipucius* from the end of the 11th century, of which Books I–XII, XIII–XVIII, and XXIV–XXXVIII have so far been published in vols. 25, 51, and 107 of the *Studi e Testi* of the Vatican Library, respectively, edited by C. Ferrini and G. Mercati, F. Dölger, and S. Hoermann and E. Seidl.